Yes, I love the interview where the all-too-unknowing potential manager asks, after offering coffee, “do you mind taking a little quiz?”. This has only happened to me once, and I will relate my response later.
The quiz consisted of no less than ten questions, five of them obvious solutions to relevant, on-going projects …it looked as though they had been struggling over them for weeks. While I didn’t have a problem taking exams in college, something for which I had prepared, “Johnnie-on-the-spot” is a manipulative and disarming way for interviewers to determine how the candidate can think on his/her feet.
Anyway, to continue the story, I pleasantly (but secretly seething) accepted the challenge, and answered five of the ten questions…but only the questions that were generic, not specific to their project. I also asked to have the interviewer be present while I perused the quiz, completing the answers on the fly. It took less than two minutes. He asked immediately: “what about the rest of the quiz?. I answered: “in order for me to complete the answers, solving your technical dilemma, I would have to negotiate/establish a rate with which I could bill you”. Needless to say, he chortled, but was irritated. Two days later, I found out that I had been chosen for the job, and it gave me great delite to inform him that I had accepted another contract.
Tom